The creature chuckled. 'You will be serving a noble purpose—a far more noble purpose than as though you had merely fulfilled the prosaic biological destiny for which you were born.'
'But you will not have to kill us!' she exclaimed. 'You take the germ cells from gorillas without killing them. When you have taken some from us, you will let us go?'
The creature rose and came close to the bars. His yellow fangs were bared in a fiendish grin. 'You do not know all,' he said. A mad light shone in his blazing eyes. 'I have not told you all that I have learned about rejuvenation. The new body cells are potent, but they work slowly. I have found that by eating the flesh and the glands of youth the speed of the metamorphosis is accelerated.
'I leave you now to meditate upon the great service that you are to render science!' He backed toward the far door of the other apartment. 'But I will return. Later I shall eat you—eat you both. I shall eat the man first; and then, my beauty, I shall eat you! But before I eat you—ah, before I eat you!'
Chuckling, he backed through the doorway and closed the door after him.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Trapped
It looks like curtains,' said the girl.
'Curtains?'
'The end of the show.'
Tarzan smiled. 'I suppose you mean that there is no hope for us—that we are doomed.'
'It looks like it, and I am afraid. Aren't you afraid?'
'I presume that I am supposed to be, eh?'
She surveyed him from beneath puckered brows. 'I cannot understand you, Stanley,' she said. 'You do not seem to be afraid now, but you used to be afraid of everything. Aren't you really afraid, or are you just posing—the actor, you know?'
'Perhaps I feel that what is about to happen is about to happen and that being afraid won't help any. Fear will never get us out of here alive, and I certainly don't intend to stay here and die if I can help it.'
'I don't see how we are going to get out,' said Rhonda.
'We are nine tenths out now.'
'What do you mean?'
'We are still alive,' he laughed, 'and that is fully nine tenths of safety. If we were dead we would be a hundred per cent lost; so alive we should certainly be at least ninety per cent saved.'
Rhonda laughed. 'I didn't know you were such an optimist,' she declared.
'Perhaps I have something to be optimistic about,' he replied. 'Do you feel that draft on the floor?'
She looked up at him quickly. There was a troubled expression in her eyes as she scrutinized his. 'Perhaps you had better lie down and try to sleep,' she suggested. 'You are overwrought.'
It was his turn to eye her. 'What do you mean?' he asked. 'Do I seem exhausted?'
'No, but—but I just thought the strain might have been too great on you.'
'What strain?' he inquired.
'What strain!' she exclaimed. 'Stanley Obroski, you come and lie down here and let me rub your head— perhaps it will put you to sleep.'
'I'm not sleepy. Don't you want to get out of here?'
'Of course I do, but we can't.'
'Perhaps not, but we can try. I asked you if you felt the draft on the floor.'
'Of course I feel it, but what has that to do with anything. I'm not cold.'
'It may not have anything to do with anything,' Tarzan admitted, 'but it suggests possibilities.'
'What possibilities?' she demanded.
'A way out. The fresh air comes in from that other room through the bars of that door; it has to go out somewhere. The draft is so strong that it suggests a rather large opening. Do you see any large opening in this room through which the air could escape.'
The girl rose to her feet. She was commencing to understand the drift of his remarks. 'No,' she said, 'I see no opening.'
'Neither do I; but there must be one, and we know that it must be some place that we cannot see.' He spoke in a whisper.
'Yes, that is right.'
'And the only part of this room that we can't see plainly is among the dark shadows on the ceiling over in that far corner. Also, I have felt the air current moving in that direction.'
He walked over to the part of the room he had indicated and looked up into the darkness. The girl came and stood beside him, also peering upward.
'Do you see anything?' she asked, her voice barely audible.
'It is very dark,' he replied, 'but I think that I do see something—a little patch that appears darker than the rest, as though it had depth.'
'Your eyes are better than mine,' she said. 'I see nothing.'
From somewhere apparently directly above them, but at a distance, sounded a hollow chuckle, weird, uncanny.
Rhonda laid her hand impulsively on Tarzan's arm. 'You are right,' she whispered. 'There is an opening above us—that sound came down through it.'
'We must be very careful what we say above a whisper,' he cautioned.
The opening in the ceiling, if such it were, appeared to be directly in the corner of the room. Tarzan examined the walls carefully, feeling every square foot of them as high as he could reach; but he found nothing that would give him a handhold. Then he sprang upward with outstretched hand—and felt an edge of an opening in the ceiling.
'It is there,' he whispered.
'But what good will it do us? We can't reach it.'
'We can try,' he said; then he stooped down close to the wall in the corner of the room. 'Get on my shoulders,' he directed—'Stand on them. Support yourself with your hands against the wall.'
Rhonda climbed to his broad shoulders. Grasping her legs to steady her, he rose slowly until he stood erect.
'Feel carefully in all directions,' he whispered. 'Estimate the seize of the opening; search for a handhold.'
For some time the girl was silent. He could tell by the shifting of her weight from one foot to the other and by the stretching of her leg muscles that she was examining the opening in every direction as far as she could reach.
Presently she spoke to him. 'Let me down,' she said.
He lowered her to the floor. 'What did you discover?' he asked.
'The opening is about two feet by three. It seems to extend inward over the top of the wall at one side—I could distinctly feel a ledge there. If I could get on it I could explore higher.'
'We'll try again,' said Tarzan. 'Put your hands on my shoulders.' They stood facing one another. 'Now place your left foot in my right hand. That's it! Straighten up and put your other foot in my left hand. Now keep your legs and body rigid, steady yourself with your hands against the wall; and I'll lift you up again—probably a foot and a half higher than you were before.'
'All right,' she whispered. 'Lift!'
He raised her easily but slowly to the full extent of Ms arms. For a moment he held her thus; then, first from one hand and then from the other, her weight was lifted from him.
He waited, listening. A long minute of silence ensued; then, from above him, came a surprised 'Ouch!'
Tarzan made no sound, he asked no question—he waited. He could hear her breathing, and knew that nothing very serious had surprised that exclamation from her. Presently he caught a low whisper from above.
